Whatever you do, don’t get bogged down in details (other than sanitation). I’ve encountered way too many home-brewers who are so anal about recipes and temperatures and the like that they suck the fun right out of the hobby. Relax and have fun with it.
I used to have real fun with those types by “Jedi brewing” beers. No measurements, no thermometers, no recipes. Just wing it! Really pissed them off when I’d kick their butts in competitions.
Story time: One night the owners of the local home-brew shop and I were sitting around in the back room after closing, sampling the latest efforts. After more than a few, we were struck by the Need To Brew. So we proceeded to mash all the grains that were piled under the mill that day, added all the cans of malt that had lost their labels, tossed in the random bags of white powder on the shelves that were also label-less, hopped it with whatever hops were in the freezer from the previous harvest, and hit it with about 4 different yeasts, including champagne yeast because the O.G. of that batch was about 5. It fermented for a month or two in the back room, and then we bottled 7 gallons of what came to be known as “Leviathan.” That beer swept the Barleywine category of every beer competition we entered it in for the next 18 months.